TheRodinhoods

Guidance for a Web Services Company

Kunal Bhusare

Hello Everyone,

We are a web services startup founded in May 2012, based at Indore. After struggling to meet our expenses for the first year, we have finally managed to get into the positives and are doing better from the last quarter.

But, after reaching this stage, we have got more confused with the ‘better’ part.

So, after being silent participants at TheRodinhoods for 1 year (I was present at the March Open House in Mumbai), we finally decide to speak up and ASK our doubts.

 

Let me give you a bit more about ourselves and then jump on to the questions:
We are 2 partners and 2 employees providing web services like Website development, developing technical scripts, API integration, product development mostly using PHP stack technologies, preferably WordPress. We take projects from the various ‘freelancing’ websites and have managed to build a decent reputation there. Our monthly revenues are in 5 digits (Rs) and profitability is around 30 to 35% (after nominal salaries to the founders). Based on the current workload, we plan to hire a couple of more resources by the next quarter.

We seek your kind guidance on the following aspects:

  1. How much should we rely on the freelancing websites. What are the other options to reach out to clients

  2. How to tap the market outside India and acquire more long term reliable clients

  3. What should be our strategy in terms of technical offerings and expansion, considering our current area of expertise (PHP, wordpress)

  4. What are the relevant matrices to measure our growth and forecast the revenues

  5. What are the important financial ratios to keep an eye on, to ensure healthy foundation to our startup and posing ourselves for growth

  6. How much should we focus on processes and matrices compared to doing things (jobs that shall earn us on short-term basis).

  7. What is a good sign/time for expansion and what are the good practices.

  8. For a small team like us – should we look for freshers and train them on our own or hire 1-2 years experience person?

 

Shall be glad to share further details if required. Looking forward to your guidance.